Quote

The biggest public health challenge is rebuilding health systems. In other words, if you look at cholera or maternal mortality or tuberculosis in Haiti, they're major problems in Haiti, but the biggest problem is rebuilding systems.

Paul Farmer

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Paul Farmer
Age: 65
Born: 1959
Born: October 26
Anthropologist
Human Rights Activist
Medical Anthropologist
Physician
North Adams
Massachusetts
Public
Systems
Words
Majors
Problem
Major
Tuberculosis
Look
Biggest
Cholera
Looks
Challenge
Maternal
Health
Rebuilding
Problems
Haiti
Challenges
Mortality

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If I am hungry, that is a material problem if someone else is hungry, that is a spiritual problem.
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That's when I feel most alive, when I'm helping people.
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With rare exceptions, all of your most important achievements on this planet will come from working with others- or, in a word, partnership.
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What I can argue is that no one should have to die of a disease that is treatable.
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The thing about rights is that in the end you can't prove what should be considered a right.
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The idea that because you're born in Haiti you could die having a child. The idea that because you're born in you know Malawi your children may go to bed hungry. We want to take some of the chance out of that.
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It is clear that the pharmaceutical industry is not, by any stretch of the imagination, doing enough to ensure that the poor have access to adequate medical care.
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For me, an area of moral clarity is: you're in front of someone who's suffering and you have the tools at your disposal to alleviate that suffering or even eradicate it, and you act.
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I think that looking forward it's easy to imagine more constructive help for Haiti.
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I think, sometimes, that I'm going nuts, and that perhaps there is something good about blocking clean water for those who have none, making sure that illiterate children remain so, and preventing the resuscitation of the public health sector in the country most in need of it. Lunacy is what it is.
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Equity is the only acceptable goal
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Ebola has not yet come into contact with modern medicine in West Africa. But when protocols for the provision of high quality supportive care are followed, the case fatality rate for Ebola may be lower than 20 percent.
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We have to design a health delivery system by actually talking to people and asking, 'What would make this service better for you?' As soon as you start asking, you get a flood of answers.
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It is very expensive to give bad medical care to poor people in a rich country.
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In fact, it seems to me that making strategic alliances across national borders in order to treat HIV among the world's poor is one of the last great hopes of solidarity across a widening divide.
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God gives us humans everything we need to flourish, but he's not the one who's supposed to divvy up the loot. You want to see where Christ crucified abides today? Go to where the poor are suffering and fighting back, and that's where He is.
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Civil and political rights are critical, but not often the real problem for the destitute sick. My patients in Haiti can now vote but they can't get medical care or clean water.
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I've been impressed, over the last 15 years, with how often the somewhat conspiratorial comments of Haitian villagers have been proven to be correct when the historical record is probed carefully.
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Everybody should be interested in access to primary and secondary education for everybody.
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The idea that some lives matter less is the root of all that is wrong with the world.
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